Devices including or coupled to one or more digital cameras use a camera sensor to capture light information for generating digital images. Camera sensors for digital cameras typically capture a limited range of brightness or light intensity when capturing an image frame of a scene. A conventional image captured with a limited or standard range of brightness is called a limited-dynamic range (LDR) image or a standard-dynamic range (SDR) image.
Many devices capture an LDR or SDR image using an automatically determined exposure value (e.g., an auto-exposure (AE) setting) and an undesirably limited range of brightness captured for the captured image. For example, although a person is able to perceive a large range of brightness and light effects of a scene (such as shadows and color contrasts), a captured LDR or SDR image may appear muted or dull because of its limited range of brightness. To compensate for the limited range of brightness associated with such captured images, many digital cameras perform high-dynamic range (HDR) imaging for capturing images.
For HDR imaging, multiple LDR or SDR images are captured with different exposure values, and the captured images are blended to create an HDR image that includes capture information for a larger range of exposures than an LDR or SDR image. The exposure values for the LDR images may be influenced by a user input or aspects of the image, but the exposure values are still limited by conventional HDR imaging such that the number of images to be captured and the exposure values used in capturing the number of images may not be optimal for the HDR image to be created.